


There's No Life Without...

by Filigranka



Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: Food, M/M, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:47:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23273461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigranka/pseuds/Filigranka
Summary: a) tea;b) sweets,c)youthose who bring them to Count D.
Relationships: Count D/Leon Orcot
Comments: 12
Kudos: 50
Collections: All The Nice Things Flash Exchange 2020





	There's No Life Without...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LuciferxDamien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuciferxDamien/gifts).



The tea was delicious. Something which Count D had never tasted before—a rare experience for _the one_ of his kind. Perhaps humans and that science of theirs managed to create, cultivate, engineer (definitely not “raise”; humanity had no gift for raising) something magical: a spice, a leaf, a flower.

Ah. Either way, it was so good. Starting from a sweet and fresh note of an actual flower—peony? not a rose, surely, roses were like cinema stars, stealing all of your attention and breath—blowing up one’s mouth, going through the bitterness of oxidised leaves and leaving with the deep, hidden flowery note from the tea itself, like a mirror or a memory of that opening…

But still, it was bitter enough to be served with sweets. Which Leon, a practical man, brought along with the tea. A pack of macaroons, colourful like—to quote Chris—D’s pets.

Well, pets or not, D’s friends definitely planned to “steal” a few cakes after the evening. D wouldn’t mind sharing already, but Leon looked at them icily and hemmed every time D’s friends tried to even put their faces on a table.

“It’s quite good.” Count D felt his lips raising and barely managed to change his smile into a light, almost unnoticeable one. “Good. And chosen with a great care. Thank—”

“Good? Just ‘good’? This tea cost me half of my wage!” Leon choked on a macaroon – a pink one, Count D noticed absently. “It’d better be a fantastic, amazing, incredible, beyond-imagination experience!”

“It definitely is a beyond imagination moment.” Even putting aside the heavenly experience of a slow drink, unreeling layers of its tastes in his mouth, Count would never have imagined Leon could find such a good tea.

He’d never have thought Leon would care enough to find anything other than sweets from the shop at the corner of his street. Which were very nice sweets and Count had nothing against getting—eating—them! They were just… a beast of a very different quality that these state-of-art macaroons or this excellent, rare tea.

Whatever Leon wanted, it must have been big. Count recalled recent news—some new mafioso were desperately trying to make a name for himself, enough to get a “vulture” to dispose of his enemies’ bodies (and promised to never feed him the meat of an innocent…), a movie star went missing, a famous doctor got accused of a tax fraud, people were killing, maiming and cheating on each other as always… But, except for a vulture and usual mafia business, Count couldn’t think about anything which might have led Leon to his doorstep.

“Well, so the clerk said. I searched the whole city for it.”

“The case you’re working on must be very hard.”

“Yeah, it’s a real—hey! You ungrateful snake, you think I’m bringing you all these as a bribe? Who do you think you are, a president?”

“I see no other reason for you to bring me things.”

Chris, licking his fingers after eating his sixth macaroon, looked at Count D with pure condescension. Human kids were weird and terrifying creatures, completely void of a self-preservation instinct, to look at one of D’s kind like this.

Leon shook his head. “It’s a gift. For your birthday.”

Count D stilled. “Who—what gave you an idea I have birthday today?” He didn’t... Probably, he wasn’t completely sure. And even if he had, he didn’t observe this human tradition, so…

“Well, it might be a gift for some other occasion, if you prefer. Chris noticed you don’t really celebrate anything and he insisted you should—and we should celebrate with you, too, as your friends, bringing you gifts and eating together…”

Chris, raising the seventh macaroon to his mouth, clucked enthusiastically.

“It’s not that I think you’re my friend, of course,” added Leon quickly, his cheeks suddenly red. “You’re, er, my primary suspect in at least half a dozen cases. But you’re also my source and Chris likes you so much, and I think my source and my Chris deserve nice things, birthday or not. So, er, we decided today is your birthday. The day for you to be happy, carefree, get gifts, drink great tea. With us. Being all so joyful. Today. Unless you could show me any ID with your actual date of birth… No? I somehow suspected this would be the case.” Leon sighed. “I’m a terrible policeman. I couldn’t even properly arrest you.”

“To the contrary, you’re a great policeman! You’re very efficiently stopping me from committing any crimes right now!” noted Count D cheerfully.

Perhaps too cheerfully. Perhaps he shouldn’t be so… dangerously buzzing with happiness and excitement right. Perhaps he shouldn’t be—happy—that a human considered him his friend and brought him gifts just because. To bring Count D joy and see him happy. No, it definitely shouldn’t concern or make him excited at all.

But here he was, and it all simply—did. 

Count D. put his cup down, carefully—it was at least two centuries old china!—and promised himself he’d not sell any… demanding… rare pets in this week. Or perhaps even the next one. Everything for this most extraordinary example of not only police, but the whole humanity, sitting next to him and _slurping_ the tea, and extending his hand to—

Well, corrected himself D., almost everything.

And then, he managed to snatch the last green macaroon straight from Leon’s fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to saiditallbefore for a beta! <3


End file.
